Full Transcript
Caroline:
3D printing is an additive process.
Garrett:
Plastic being heated up – think, like, a hot glue gun.
Caroline:
It’s like a hot glue gun.
Garrett:
The hot glue gun will move around on a bed where it will lay down, layer by layer, an object.
Caroline:
3D printing prints with plastic, it’s called filaments, and it’s about the thickness of pasta. You thread it through the printer, through the extruder, which is the top, it’s the hot metal end. The filament extrudes out of the printer, the printhead then touches the bottom build plate.
Garrett:
So you essentially start with one layer, so you have a square that’s hollow, your bottom layer will be an entire flat square.
Caroline:
The printhead moves and it draws the outline of the shape, and then fills the shape in.
Garrett:
Several layers up you’ll just have the walls of the square.
Pete:
Welcome to Blind Abilities, I’m Pete Lane. Today we present a follow-up interview with Caroline Karbowski, CEO of See 3D Incorporated.
Caroline:
I asked her what was a castle to you, before you felt the model, and she said castle was just a word, and it didn’t mean really much. I decided that I need to do more models, because we need to make things more than just words.
Pete:
Caroline joined our podcast back in 2017 as a high school student, with an idea and a passion.
Caroline:
-and even DNA, that was a highly requested model.
Pete:
Today she returns to Blind Abilities and shares her progress on that idea.
Jeff:
What I’m hearing here is you’re developing a network of entities that have 3D printers that want to participate in providing 3D models for people who are blind.
Caroline:
Exactly. We’re now having students print themselves, with screen readers, and then they can print the model and send it to a printer that we’re at. Especially with COVID, students are at home, and we’re with the printers. If they can print the model where we are, then we can mail the models just like how students are mailed their school supplies.
Pete:
And her passion, which still shines brightly.
Caroline:
It’s just really exciting because we’re getting to do two great things: we’re making it accessible and we’re able to do it during COVID.
Pete:
Today we also meet two of her See 3D team members: Garrett-
Garrett:
Not treating people like they can’t do things, treating people like they can do things.
Pete:
-and Kara.
Kara:
Disability is just the lack of accessibility. Disability isn’t the disability, that’s a disadvantage, it’s the lack of accessibility.
Pete:
Jeff had an opportunity to chat with Garrett and Kara, before Caroline joined the rest of the team. And now, without further ado, let’s join Jeff Thompson in the Blind Abilities studio, with his special guests, the team from See 3D Incorporated.
Jeff:
Can I ask each of you to give an introduction?
Garrett:
Hi, my name’s Garrett Carder, I became a part of See 3D freshman year of college, so I’m a junior at Ohio State right now in computer science, and what I do for See 3D- well, my official title is CTO, but what that really means is I work on everything with the website, and just about any technology initiative we do, so I’m very well-versed with the printers and all those kinds of things, and we’ll get more into some of the technical details of that later.
Kara:
My name is Kara Herzog, I’m the social media manager for See 3D. I got involved this past spring at a career fair, I just came across the booth and I was like, this is so cool and I applied and I’ve been doing marketing for them since May. It’s really great, I’m a marketing student at Ohio State, so I really like working for See 3D. I never even heard of it before, like, I never thought of that, like 3D printing, I knew it was a thing but I never thought of like how you could use it in the real world like that, and I think it’s awesome.
Jeff:
I was at the NFB convention, I was wearing my Blind Abilities t-shirt, and she walked up to me and said “Hi, are you with Blind Abilities?” You know, because of the t-shirt, I suppose that was a giveaway. She actually came to the NFB convention to check it out, I mean, that’s how much passion she had for what she’s doing, for 3D printing for the blind. Yeah. That was really something.
Garrett:
She’s very active in the community, I mean it goes a lot deeper than just our company. She’s really involved in all the events, and going to things to be involved in the community more so than just to build model requests and keep doing what we’re doing. I have a lot of respect for that.
Jeff:
When I was talking with her, she had just gotten a couple schools in the area involved in printing up 3D images for the blind, it’s grown since then. So, what’s the reach right now?
Garrett:
So, we’ve been trying to reach out to more schools. I’m not sure where we were the last time she was on the podcast, but now we’re in OSSB, that’s been a thing for about a year now.
Jeff:
That’s Ohio State?
Garrett:
Yep, that’s the Ohio State School for the Blind, which is about three miles north of the Ohio State campus.
Jeff:
Oh, okay.
Kara:
We’ve been involved in the OSSB Space Science Mentorship Program, so that’s through OSSB and Ohio State, and we’ve been donating models for them to do that, which is really cool. My boyfriend’s actually an astrophysics major, so he’s been mentoring some students who are blind, which is really cool.
Jeff:
So now they can touch the stars.
Kara:
Yeah!
Jeff:
That’s cool. Garrett, you said you know a lot about 3D printing, can you explain to people what 3D printing is?
Garrett:
Yeah, so, essentially what you have is plastic being heated up, think like a hot glue gun, and essentially what’s happening is that that hot glue gun can move around on a bed where it will lay down layer by layer an object. So essentially you start with one layer, so you have a square that’s hollow, your bottom layer will be an entire flat square, and then several layers up you’ll just have the walls of the square. And then when you get to the top it’ll complete the square essentially with that motion.
Jeff:
Oh, cool. So how does the 3D printer get that information?
Garrett:
It all starts out with a 3D model file, typically in the format of a .scl or a .obj file extension, those you can find many places across the internet, I know Caroline has probably 20 different websites she uses. The main one we use is thingoverse.com, you start with that model, and then you plug that into a piece of software, where it essentially translates that 3D model into code the printer can read. It’s essentially a path for the printer to follow, is what it gets turned into. And then, yeah, you run it on the printer and it just does its thing.
Jeff:
So if someone had something that’s unique, how would someone get that information into a file so it can feed it to a 3D printer?
Garrett:
Are you talking about very specific models that may be on the internet?
Jeff:
Yeah, say someone made a prototype of a widget, whatever, how would you go about having an object from scratch?
Garrett:
Oh, I see. Yeah, so there are many modelling softwares out there, some being very in-depth, some being very simple, for example tinkercad’s very on the simple end if you’re just getting into it, where you can just kind of take objects and fuse them together, subtract them from each other, change the sizing of them, and then you have more complex modelling softwares where you can actually make drawings and then extrude those drawings or cut holes from the drawing and things like that.
Jeff:
Oh, wow.
Garrett:
The actual process, the way it works out for See 3D, is as soon as we get a model request we usually peruse through the internet to see if we can find it somewhere else, and just to obviously save time on our end, if we realize okay, we can’t find it somewhere, then we have a channel on Slack with several designers who can actually do that for us.
Jeff:
That’s great, the network.
Garrett:
Yeah, exactly, I mean that’s the one thing that I’ve really learned from See 3D is the power of networking. We’ve really found a lot of connections to make this possible, I mean, this whole operation really wouldn’t be possible if the people we’d found- there’s a guy named Jamie who, anytime we need something, can always model it for us or print it out if we need it. That’s just to name one, there are several more.
Jeff:
Kara, social media, how can people find more about See 3D Inc., incorporated?
Kara:
See 3D, yes. So our Instagram is See, S-E-E dot 3D, and our Twitter is see3dprinting. That’s the handle for that. Yeah, I’ve been posting on social media since May, posted a lot of different posts, and I’ve learned a lot about accessibility through that, for people who are blind. For example, like, for people who have low vision, it’s important to make sure the photos are really clear and you don’t have a lot of icons or text on it, which I never really knew about before, I didn’t know it was distracting. If I do include words, making sure it’s high contrast, easy to read, and then I’d also never heard of alt text before. When I first started to write alt text I was pretty bad at it, I probably wrote too long, too many words, and too detailed or not enough detail, but over time I learned how to make it the right alt text and now I can pretty much do it on my own, with Caroline’s help of course. But, yeah, really cool learning how to make social media accessible.
Jeff:
Yeah, and that’s see3d.org on the web. What 3D model surprised you the most?
Garrett:
I would say, I guess the most interesting thing that I had never really thought of was we had to print fire for somebody.
Jeff:
Fire…
Garrett:
Because that’s one of those things where you can’t touch fire, it’s something that you really can only see. By taking that and putting it into a 3D model, this inanimate- or, I don’t want to say inanimate, this concept so difficult to explain to somebody, that can really just be seen immediately through touch.
Jeff:
Oh, yeah. So much for a request for air! That’s interesting, fire, I didn’t think about that.
Kara:
Yeah. I like the character models, like when people order their favorite movie characters, something like that, because I know that means a lot to be able to see what their favorite characters look like, so we’ve done the minions, and Yoda, and Hulk, and R2D2, and a bunch of different characters.
Jeff:
Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, and it’s not an expensive type of product, when you really think about it, I believe. Can you tell us how the machine actually works, is there a filament, does it feed different colors in, or how does that work?
Garrett:
There is all kinds of filament out there, you can get anything from metal filament to even some wood composite filaments. Mainly we print with PLA plastic, and you can buy that in just about any color. You get that for around 15 dollars per kilogram, and that really ends up being one of the only costs after you’ve bought the actual printer. There are small things, like you have to have glue sticks for the bed and things, and of course the electricity that it uses, but as far as actual consumables that’s really the only thing that you have to maintain, as the big cost factor.
Jeff:
And so, once you make the products, then you ship it out to the requester.
Garrett:
Yeah, exactly, so this is something Caroline talks about a lot, we’re actually able to mail out all our models for free, free matter, through the mail. I don’t know if it’s only limited to educational materials, but if you’re mailing things to people who are blind-
Jeff:
Yeah, free matter for the blind. Yeah. That works. And anybody can request who’s visually impaired, blind, or teaching, they can go right to the website at see3d.org, I see that there’s a request button, or another button for getting involved, that’s pretty good.
Garrett:
Yeah, so all you’ve gotta do is go on there and fill out one form and you’re good to go. Caroline will usually reach out to you via email or something and you know, just network a little bit, but, yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah. I like the clarity of the website, it’s basically broke up into three, four parts and you just boom, boom, boom. There you go.
Garrett:
We just did a huge redesign, I think it was about three or four months ago now, I think this new redesign’s a lot more cohesive and really easier for someone who’s blind to understand.
Jeff:
Yeah, it didn’t take me long to figure it out. You don’t really need an about page, because it’s all right up front, and then I saw the team here. I’ve got a question for you, now that both of you are involved in a company that actually provides a service to the blind, have you opened your eyes a little bit or now see people who have a cane or a guide dog? I’m just saying this because before I lost some vision, I didn’t really pay attention to anything like that, and now afterwards it’s like I see them all over the place, people- or braille, I notice things like that. Has it changed how you perceive the blind and visually impaired in society?
Garrett:
Most definitely, I mean, everywhere you go I’m noticing the braille now. There’s been a few times where I’ve even seen braille memes and stuff and sent them to Caroline, and three years ago I would have never imagined getting braille memes on my feed, like yeah, to answer your question, yeah, it really has changed our perspective. One of the things Caroline talks about a lot is not treating people like they can’t do things, treating people like they can do things. I think that’s really important because it really changes your perspective and wanting to help these people learn more and help these people do things that they couldn’t, and seeing it as they can do more with the technology applied.
Kara:
Yeah, I agree. I heard a quote someone said, she was doing an innovation studio through Ohio State. She said “Disability is just the lack of accessibility. Disability isn’t the disability, that’s the disadvantage, it’s the lack of accessibility.” As long as we can make everything accessible, then there will be no disability. Yeah. I definitely have started to notice things more, like what you were say about seeing memes online, if I see something like that, I definitely take it more into account than I would have before.
Jeff:
Oh, yeah. Speaking of 3D printing, I just saw an article a couple weeks ago which made me think of See 3D, and that’s when I sent the message out to you guys. A 3D printer, but it’s for concrete, and they’re building multi-complex houses with it. So it’s a machine, the filament is concrete, like you can just imagine how it goes, and I was like, wow. That’s huge. Do not bring this indoors.
Garrett:
Yeah, that’s been a huge thing lately. I actually saw that too, and it’s really cool because if we’re able to bring that to market and bring that to scale, there could be a lot of positive benefits for society. I mean, look at some of the housing issues, I mean not even just in America but in other, lesser developed countries, these are really problems that we can actually start to address using technology like this.
Jeff:
Yeah. Caroline Karbowski the CEO, welcome, Caroline, how are you doing?
Caroline:
I’m doing well, thanks so much for inviting me on the call!
Jeff:
You bet, and thank you for what you’re doing. A couple years ago we talked when castle was just a word, and you were explaining snowflakes and making 3D images and making them available to people who were curious about putting imagery to just words that they knew. It seems like you’ve got a whole team now, so good for you on making this grow and become bigger and more available to people.
Caroline:
I had been 3D printing models and giving them to people who were blind to allow them to understand their world better.
Jeff:
And this started out as a project for your Tech Olympics in high school.
Caroline:
Yes. I worked on an idea, we could have multiple students from many different schools 3D print models and then mail them, so it would be a large community, so not just me printing, but having kids at other schools-
-thank you. Yes, ever since the Blind Abilities podcast more people started contacting us and from there we’ve just kept on going. [Unintelligible] to see where we’ve come since the last podcast.
Jeff:
Yeah, I think one of the main things that caught my attention is someone wanted a 3D image of the Walt Disney castle. She never knew what a castle was, because it was just a word, you know, adding an image through touch to a word and making that connection, it just makes you want to print up more and more 3D images for people.
Caroline:
I was talking about it with my friends last night, about 3D printing, and they were like, what if in the future you can order something online and then have it 3D print inside of your house, like what if that could be where 3D printing goes in the future?
Jeff:
Oh, wow.
Caroline:
That’d be pretty cool.
Garrett:
And that’s kind of essentially what we’re doing right now, with the cloud 3D printing softwares that are out there. We use a website called Polar3D, which essentially allows you to just upload it online, and then it does just get shot to a printer somewhere, and you can queue up JAWS and things like that, it’s really powerful because we’re actually able to have the blind students use their screen readers and things like that, and operate that website.
Caroline:
And then they can print that model and send it to a printer where we’re at, especially with COVID the students are at home, and we’re with the printers, so if they can click the print button on their computer and print the model where we are, it’s not only accessible for the blind, it’s accessible with COVID, and then we can mail the models just like how the students are mailed their school supplies. It’s just really exciting, because we’re getting to do two great things, we’re making it accessible and we’re able to do it during COVID.
Jeff:
That’s great. Yeah, I was telling your team here, Garrett and Kara, that I was really impressed when I met you at the NFB convention, you saw my t-shirt and came up to me and introduced yourself, and it was like wow, what are you doing here, I know what you’re doing here, but your passion for what you do is unmatched by so many that are doing something like this. You’re sighted yourself, but your experience with your friend led you into this path, where have you grown to since then?
Caroline:
Yes, so now we’re a 501c3 nonprofit, we’ve distributed over 900 models since 2017, we’ve sent them to 15 states, four countries, and 12 different organizations. We’ve also connected with people in 11 countries, we’ve also worked with- people have given us grants, and funding, we now also have 14 other people in our internal See 3D network, it’s now no longer just me, my family, and Emily, I don’t even think I knew Garrett at the time, for the first Blind Abilities podcast, and now we have 14 others also working with us, we have an intern team. Our volunteer team has grown as well, we’ve been able to connect four volunteers in Slack and been able to connect with them that way, and it’s been more organized than the email system we had before. We also have co-led the Ohio State School for the Blind model club, where we’re now having students being able to print themselves with screen readers, we’ve gone to multiple presentations, I was at CSUN in the spring. It just has been very exciting to be able to connect with people and spread our ideas, going to more conferences, and raising awareness.
Jeff:
That’s great. So say someone is interested, they find out about the company and they want to know what an igloo looks like. I see on the website that it’s easy enough to do.
Garrett:
It actually is fed directly into our Slack channel, where we actually have a command where it’ll allow us to list out every model request and mark them as complete. We’re able to then pass that down to our design and print channels that we also have on Slack, where we can pass that onto volunteers, or if it’s say smaller, more unique models then we’ll usually do it on our home printers to save the extra shipping costs.
Caroline:
The initial request is done through our website, at see3d.org, and people can fill out a form and answers from the form go to the Slack channel.
Jeff:
So anybody that requests something, they just start the chain in motion and boom, there it goes.
Caroline:
Yes!
Jeff:
That’s pretty cool. That’s efficiency, good job. How can people get involved to help out See 3D?
Caroline:
So, they can fill out a form on our website for- one means interest in joining the Slack channel, just 3D print existing models, or design new models, or do both. And when you fill out the interest form on our website, we’ll then send you the link to our Slack channel, and then you can join and talk on there, Slack’s available as an app on a phone, a tablet, or on the computer, and it is accessible. We then want to invite people who know 3D printing, knew people with 3D printing. We’re also hoping that we can have more blind volunteers as 3D printers become more accessible.
Jeff:
What I’m hearing here is you’re developing a network of entities that have 3D printers that want to participate in the distribution and providing 3D models for people who are blind.
Caroline:
Exactly.
Garrett:
And to kind of expand on your question about getting involved, it’s not necessarily limited to 3D printing and 3D modelling as well. Kara’s a perfect example of that, she’s on our marketing team, but our latest initiative actually has been- we’ve been trying to standardize our models into a set of kits where we can provide descriptions with the kits and kind of formalize the whole process, so we can kind of provide a theme. So for example, right now on our website we have two kits posted, we have an anatomy kit up there, and we have a United States landmarks kit. We were able to bring in volunteers to help us create those learning plans. That’s essentially something anybody can do, that’s writing out descriptions of a model. Obviously there’s a little extra lingo they need to know, but we can kind of edit things to what they need to be and just kind of use that as a starting point essentially if that makes sense.
Jeff:
Yeah, I saw the anatomy kit, and I just kind of squeamished, just a little bit, I was like hmm. But that’s really cool, because how else are you gonna find that out? Interesting stuff. I was talking to Garrett and Kara earlier, and they were talking about some of the interesting 3D models that have been made – Caroline, what is one of the most interesting models that you’ve seen made?
Caroline:
Oh, the box of mimic from Dungeons and Dragons was I think the funniest one. It’s like a treasure chest with arms and legs coming out of it, I always thought that was funny. I guess any of the astronomy ones, it’s always interesting to see the Hubble telescope, or the James Webb space telescope, the ISS, I really like those models from NASA, because they are accurate and they print well, things like the Curiosity Rover. They’re so intricate, and I think a lot of times when we think of a telescope we think like a tube. These telescopes that are in space are much more exciting than just a tube, so sometimes people are like wow, I never thought of what the Hubble space telescope looks like, and then seeing how diverse these structures are makes people think oh, what could I design, it’s a lot of excitement. Also, the DNA model that breaks apart that you can build, I find that really exciting, because I’m a biology and chemistry major, and I didn’t understand DNA until I really interacted with the model, and when you’re building it you can understand how it works. Most people when they touch the DNA model get excited and understand how it works, so I like models that make people start thinking and getting excited about new models.
Jeff:
You’re talking about the Rover that they sent to Mars?
Caroline:
Yes! So there’s a model of the Curiosity Rover that NASA’s posted, the wheels even rotate because they’re a separate piece.
Jeff:
Oh, wow! We’re talking toys now.
Caroline:
Yes.
Jeff:
So tell me a little bit more about the Ohio State School for the Blind club, what do they do?
Caroline:
Yes, so when Garrett and I were both first year students and OSU, OSSB contacted us asking if we could help with their 3D model club, because they had 3D printers but they weren’t sure how to work them. Garrett and I went every week and we printed models that are smaller versions of the larger models they had at OSSB. They actually have a collection of models made during the Great Depression with the WPA program, and these are models like the Taj Mahal, the Ohio Capital Building, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Great Pyramids, and these models are very old and they’re trying to refurbish them, they’re also very large and there’s only one copy, so we can make models, each kid can have their own copy, even after they graduate they can have a copy, and they can also maybe use the smaller model to get the big picture and then go to the big model for the detail. So we were just learning how to work the 3D printers with the students, and then now once those models are printed, some teachers had ideas for printing new models, the students also had ideas, so the second year was more requests we were doing. And now since the students are online, we’re printing again student and teacher requests but the students look for the models online, load it to Polar3D using screen readers, and then they are printed to the printers at the club moderators’ houses, and then we mail them to the students.
Jeff:
So what you’re saying is you’ve made 3D printers accessible to the blind.
Caroline:
Yes, and maybe not at first 100% accessible, but we have found ways to make them accessible. Garrett’s worked a lot on that.
Garrett:
Yeah, so that’s the whole thing with Polar3D that I was talking about. That is the most accessible slicing software that we’ve found so far. The slicing software is actually what I was talking about earlier, that turns the models into printer code. That’s one of the solutions, also there’s an app you can get called Aira, I don’t know how familiar everybody on the podcast is with that, but it essentially allows somebody to be the eyes for you, and so we’ve had the students use that to operate the printers when, say, we’re short on people that go around, and have somebody be their eyes for them.
Jeff:
That’s probably pretty exciting for Aira agents, who all of a sudden get to build a Walt Disney castle or something.
Caroline:
Right, and it’s exciting to be- the Aira agent has described the model is working or is it falling apart as it’s printing, because you can’t touch it because it’s hot. You can pause the print and then see if it’s okay, but if you can do it without pausing it’s faster. Having an accessible slicer also allows students to find out when the printer’s being heated. They were so excited hearing online that the printer was going to 200 degrees Celsius, and instead of just saying oh, the printer’s hot, they now knew the exact temperature and they could track when the printer was heating up or when it was cooling down. Like the student realized the temperature was decreasing, and then we realized that the printer had been turned off, and we didn’t know that. That’s just some of the exciting discoveries we’ve been able to have because the printers have been more accessible with the online sites or with Polar3D.
Jeff:
Well, I think that’s really cool because not only are you providing a service that someone could actually get a model, a 3D model, but you’re actually helping people access the printers themselves. That’s really cool. Making an impact.
Garrett:
So, you earlier had me explain 3D printing. I’d like to have Caroline give that because she has a really good explanation that’s probably better than mine. I tried to use some of her analogies, but I couldn’t remember all of them.
Jeff:
He even tried to imitate your voice, Caroline.
Caroline:
Oh my gosh!
Jeff:
Go ahead.
Caroline:
Sure, so 3D printing is an additive process, so you start at the bottom, and you add up to the top of the model. 3D printing prints with plastic, it’s called filament, and it’s about the thickness of pasta. There’s actually different thicknesses that you can have, depending on what your printer can take. You thread the filament that is wound up in a spool kind of like thread, you thread it through the printer, through the extruder, which is the top, it’s a hot metal end. It’s like a hot glue gun, it’s like putting hot glue inside a hot glue gun, and then the filament extrudes out of the printer and is melted and the printhead then touches the bottom build plates, usually a square or a rectangle. The printhead moves and it draws the outline of the shape, and then fills the shape in, so if you’re making a cone, kind of like an upside-down ice cream cone, it would first draw a circle and fill the circle in, and then the printer goes up a little bit and draws a smaller circle and goes up and draws a smaller circle until you get to the top, where it’s just a point. The filament is melted when it comes out, but once it’s put down it hardens really quickly, that’s how you’re able to add another layer on top.
Jeff:
Oh, wow. Yeah, I’ve experienced a glue gun, I do wood working but I use a glue gun once in a while, and that stuff is hot, so that’s good information to know. Hot and sticky.
Caroline:
Yep.
Jeff:
I really like the website, it’s really fluid, it’s right up front, I got all the information right there, and it was really good to be able to know that people can request just by clicking on that, as you mentioned, people can get involved in it, and people can help support. Talk about supporting See 3D.
Caroline:
Sure, so of course one way to support is being involved with the actual printing, and designing. You can also donate via our PayPal link now, we no longer use the GoFundMe page that we used to have during the first podcast. You can also braille, we send braille address labels so if you have an embosser or a brailler and you want to braille address labels or some of the labels for models like the USA map, we always have the stand where we put the postal code, so for Ohio you just put OH on the state, so if someone could just print out a sheet with all the state postal codes and then mail it to us, we can then cut it out and put it on the model, or even braille transcribing for our learning plans, we send you a Word doc and then you can send us the BRF, which then we can put on our website and also send to our embossers, or if you have an embosser you can braille things. You can pack material if you’re in the area, we can use boxes that we can mail out for packaging materials and filament, if you have filament that you aren’t using, you could either give it to us or if you have a printer and want to print yourself you could do that, especially for filament colors that maybe you don’t need anymore, or as we work with some 3D printing companies finding unsellable filament, perhaps their filament was maybe the slightly wrong color, so we’ve been able to use that.
Jeff:
I think it’s really neat. I saw a bunch of sponsors and donators on your page. It seems like since we did the last podcast, you really have grown your network substantially.
Caroline:
Yes, so the goal of See 3D is to connect people with 3D printing or raising awareness about blindness, and we use 3D printing as our gateway, it’s our tool, because there’s some people that have done 3D printing that haven’t heard about blindness or heard about braille, and there’s people who are blind that haven’t heard about 3D printing, so it’s a great connector for all of us, and we use 3D printing for our tool to be a common bond and connect with each other, and from there, things can then branch out and replicate and be sustainable. There’s been three designers now that are thinking, oh, now the models I design could be useful for the blind, so I’m gonna include an alt text description of my model on thingoverse, or I’m going to make this part of the model stronger so it won’t break when it’s touched. Having that extra layer of thinking and mindset really just helps out in the future.
Jeff:
Oh, I think that’s great. When you said that, I didn’t even think about that, because some things may be a little bit delicate, like a sword or something, you can make the sword just a little thicker. So you’re able to edit that, your team that you have, the network and all the designers and everything, boom, they just create it, make it more useful, more useable.
Caroline:
Exactly.
Jeff:
If someone wanted to get ahold of you, how do they do that?
Caroline:
Our website is see3d.org, that’s S-E-E, the number 3, D, dot org. And our email is info@see3d.org, just I-N-F-O@see3d.org. We also have a contact form on our website, the model request form is on the website, we also have social media.
Jeff:
Kara, Garrett, Caroline, I want to thank you all for coming onto Blind Abilities and talking about See 3D, you can find them at see3d.org, and I think it’s a great thing you’re doing, keep up the good work, and we’re gonna try and get the word out to everybody.
Caroline:
Thank you!
Garrett:
Thanks for having us!
Kara:
Yeah, thanks so much!
Pete:
We’d like to thank Caroline Karbowski and her team for joining Jeff for this follow-up interview. For more information on their efforts, check out their website at www.see3d.org, and of course, check out all of their social media links.
Kara:
Our Instagram is see, S-E-E, dot 3D, and our Twitter is S-E-E3Dprinting, that’s the handle for that.
Pete:
And from all of us here at Blind Abilities, through these challenging times, to you, your family, and friends, stay well, stay informed, and stay strong. Thank you so much for listening, and have a great day.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff:
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities, download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that’s two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.
Contact Your State Services
If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361.
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